Ambalavaner Sivanandan, 89, talks about the complex process of identity formation in the age of ‘identity politics’ and the many contradictions, experiences and people that shaped, and continue to shape, his senseof self.

Lavanya Loganathan, 16, talks about growing up surrounded by Hindu Tamil celebrations in Ealing and the influence these immersions have had on her understanding of Tamil heritage and her impressions of life in Britain and Sri Lanka.

Ambalavaner Sivanandan left Ceylon in 1958, then aged 35, shocked by the violence of the ’58 riots in Colombo. Months later, he arrived in London and ‘walked straight into the Notting Hill Gate riots.’

Anonymous recollects her experiences of the mob violenceof Black July, 1983, in Wellawatte, Colombo, the last in a series ofanti-Tamil riots beginning in 1958 and widely regarded as the spark that ignited Sri Lanka into open war.

Anonymous recollects her experiences of the mob violenceof Black July, 1983, in Wellawatte, Colombo, the last in a series ofanti-Tamil riots beginning in 1958and widely regarded as the spark that ignited Sri Lanka into open war.

Mangayarkarasi Amirthalingam was born in Moolai, Vaddukoddai, Jaffnain 1933. At twelve years old, she enrolled in Ramanathan College – founded by early Tamil politicalleader Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan –to study music.

Raghavan is the alias of Rajeshkumar. Born in Punnalaikkadduvan in the North of Sri Lanka, Raghavan spent most of his youth in the charge of the LTTE before leaving in protest over authoritarianism and internecine killings in 1984.

Sinthujan Varatharajah was born in a refugee camp in Coburg, Germany in 1985. His parents fled Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, and, through a chance meeting with a German couple in the Jaffna hotel where his father worked, chose Germany as their destination.

Anonymous (Batticaloa) was born in Batticaloa, Eastern Province in 1965. By his early teens, Batticaloa had begun to feel the effects of conflict after the 1977 riots. When he reached university age in 1983, his father abruptly sent him to India for studies.

Ambica Selvaraj was born in a multicultural neighbourhood in Colombo in April 1951. Though she spoke Tamil at home and in school, she spent most of her childhood inthe company of Sinhalese andEnglish-speaking children,unaware of the issues that would become so salient later on.

The life story approach to oral history often begins with childhood. For some of our interviewees, youth coincided with the birth of an independent Ceylon, renamed Sri Lanka in the1972 Constitution. Others came of age during periods of communalconflict or war. In each case, their stories vividly recall the ebb and flow of daily life in a close-knit Jaffna village or in the bustle of the capital in Colombo.

When Britons arrived in Sri Lanka in the 18th Century, landing, as many
tourists do now, on its coastal shores before carving a path deep into its
lush, green geographic centre of Kandy, they were following a well-worn
trail to the country opened up as early as 1505 by Portuguese and Dutch
colonists.

As the mass migration away from Sri Lanka grew, Tamil life spread to many
places, including Germany, Norway, Denmark, the UK, Canada, Australia and
the USA. This type of experience is often referred to as diaspora.

Through the generations finds its resting place on the idea of home.For our speakers, home may be a place in the past, the present or the
future, in the imagination or in the physical comfort of community or
family, in Britain, Sri Lanka, a homeland in the North and East of
Sri Lanka or somewhere else entirely.